The Iris Encyclopedia has no paid advertizing but savy hybridizers and nurseries are getting great free advertizing by putting up their images. Every picture shows where it came from. By helping everyone the nurseries, etc. are also helping themselves.

I will not explain right now but at some point later the Encyclopedia could be a great tool for Judges training. Because the Encyclopedia is essentially interactive with its users it has great potential for doing many things. For now we are concentrating on getting the basics up, but later you will be amazed.

Good morning Robert, I'm relatively new to iris growing ( 12 years ) but have become an avid iris collector and plan to hybridize someday. I am also a member of a few of the Iris groups on Facebook. There have been lengthy discussions on both of these sites about society membership and the number of judges in each as well as many topics about judging and judges training.

Your last sentence makes me wonder about Iris Societies as well as commercial growers using the Iris Wiki. Can the 'satellite' societies advertise on the Iris Wiki? Perhaps this could be another way to get more people interested in their local iris societies as well as the AIS. I'm always telling people about our local iris society every time the subject of my iris addiction comes up.

I'm just getting my feet wet and am loving it, but I fear the number if growers and hybridizers had been dwindling in the past several years, or so it seems. ( horrifiying thought! ) &:-)

Linda; You could be right that people who have been contributing photos have tapped their image collection to the max. There are 30,000 images on the wiki. But considering Daves Garden has more I am sure many people have hardly begun. I am extremely thankful for everyone who has helped. I should pass along that many people have found this reference useful and said so. I am sure many more have never commented. I am a sucker for statistics and research. One of the interesting things I have found is how much people use the wiki. It varies from month to month but most months see as many as 50-100 times the visitors as any other Iris site with the exception of Shreiners. Because the wiki sends people to each of the sections and cooperating societies it is beneficial to all those groups to make their area of the wiki as nice as possible. Sadly as organizations the sections have not really taken advantag!
e of this free advertizing.